A Woman of the World | Page 3

if you live, I want you to
open, re-read and burn it on the evening before your marriage to some
lovely girl, who is probably rolling a hoop to-day; and if I am living, I
want you to write and thank me for what I have said to you here. I
hardly expect you will feel like doing it now, but I can wait.
Do not write me again until that time, and when we meet, be my good
sensible friend--one I can introduce to my husband, for only such
friends do I care to know.

To Miss Winifred Clayborne
At Vassar College
My dear niece:--It was a pleasure to receive so long a letter from you
after almost two years of silence. It hardly seems possible that you are
eighteen years old. To have graduated from high school with such
honours that you are able to enter Vassar at so early an age is much to
your credit.
I indulged in a good-natured laugh over your request for my advice
regarding a college course. You say, "I remember that I once heard you
state that you did not believe in higher education for women, and,
therefore, I am anxious to have your opinion of this undertaking of
mine."
Now of course, my dear child, what you wish me to say is, that I am
charmed with your resolution to graduate from Vassar. You have
entered the college fully determined to take a complete course, and you
surely would not like a discouraging or disapproving letter from your
auntie.
"Please give me your opinion of my course of action" always means,
"Please approve of what I am doing."
Well I do approve. I always approve when a human being is carrying

out a determination, even if I am confident it is the wrong
determination.
The really useful knowledge of life must come through strong
convictions. Strong convictions are usually obtained only on the
pathway of personal experience.
To argue a man out of a certain course of action rarely argues away his
own beliefs and desires in the matter. We may save him some bitter
experience in the contemplated project, but he is almost certain to find
that same bitter experience later, because he has been coerced, not
enlightened.
Had he gained his knowledge in the first instance, he would have
escaped the later disaster.
A college education does not seem to me the most desirable thing for a
woman, unless she intends to enter into educational pursuits as a means
of livelihood. I understand it is your intention to become a teacher, and,
therefore, you are wise to prepare yourself by a thorough education. Be
the very best, in whatever line of employment you enter.
Scorn any half-way achievements. Make yourself a brilliantly educated
woman, but look to it that in the effort you do not forget two other
important matters--health and sympathy. My objection to higher
education for women, which you once heard me express, is founded on
the fact that I have met many college women who were anaemic and
utterly devoid of emotion. One beautiful young girl I recall who at
fourteen years of age seemed to embody all the physical and
temperamental charms possible for womankind. Softly rounded
features, vivid colouring, voluptuous curves of form, yet delicacy and
refinement in every portion of her anatomy, she breathed love and
radiated sympathy. I thought of her as the ideal woman in embryo; and
the brightness of her intellect was the finishing touch to a perfect
girlhood. I saw her again at twenty-four. She had graduated from an
American college and had taken two years in a foreign institution of
learning. She had carried away all the honours--but, alas, the higher
education had carried away all her charms of person and of

temperament. Attenuated, pallid, sharp-featured, she appeared much
older than her years, and the lovely, confiding and tender qualities of
mind, which made her so attractive to older people, had given place to
cold austerity and hypercriticism.
Men were only objects of amusement, indifference, or ridicule to her.
Sentiment she regarded as an indication of crudity, emotion as an
insignia of vulgarity. The heart was a purely physical organ, she knew
from her studies in anatomy. It was no more the seat of emotion than
the liver or lungs. The brain was the only portion of the human being
which appealed to her, and "educated" people were the only ones who
interested her, because they were capable of argument and discussion
of intellectual problems--her one source of entertainment.
Half an hour in the society of this over-trained young person left one
exhausted and disillusioned with brainy women. I beg you to pay no
such price for an education as this young girl paid. I remember you as